Fewer than 80% of small businesses in the U.S. survive their first year, and at five years, the survival rate drops below 50%.

The question is—why? It’s certainly not for a lack of sweat, enthusiasm, gumption, and grit…

We believe there are three keys to small business success:

Strategy

Leadership

Culture

We are reaching out to you, the creative problem solving community to help us develop an innovative set of tools that will help small business owners more readily achieve the success they so desperately seek by mastering these three keys.

Why are we doing this?

Small business owners are the engines moving economies forward. Nurturing these entrepreneurs and their businesses brings significant returns to local and regional financial markets.

…Yet they rarely get the support they deserve.

“Do-It-Yourself business owners” truly do anything and everything imaginable to inch their businesses towards success. Even though motivation is high, there are too many demands to be met each day - It’s no wonder DIY business owners often struggle.

In order to ensure these economic lynchpins not only survive, but thrive, it’s critical to provide small business owners with the tools necessary to grow their businesses, manage day-to-day responsibilities, build better partnerships, and properly lead their employees.

This is where you come in!

Breakthroughs

DIY business owners can benefit greatly from the development of tools tailored specifically for them—tools that don’t ask them to “read the book” or “attend the seminar.”

They need practical (and applicable) insight into strategic thinking, leadership, and projection of the optimism they have within.

We are reaching out to you, the problem solving community, to create a series of tools that will help DIY entrepreneurs form viable strategies for their businesses, lead their employees to success, and create winning cultures within their companies.

You can submit an entry for one, two, or all three success categories:

Success category: STRATEGY

Module 1: Planning to Create Competitive Advantage

Module 2: Branding Your Vision and Your Business

Module 3: Selling to Generate New Customers

Success category: LEADERSHIP

Module 4: Resilience and Conquering New Territory

Module 5: Building Your Team and Key Partnerships

Module 6: Commanding Presence

Success category: CULTURE

Module 7: Creating Great Company Culture

Module 8: The Value of Simplicity

Module 9: Work-Life Balance and Stress Management

If you’re ready to help the VITALLY IMPORTANT yet underserved market of DIY business owners, read the full challenge guidelines!

We are proud to announce the winners in the $25,000 Patterns for Success Challenge!

After a rigorous review by our judging panel, our top award recipients are as follows:

Strategy Category

Sreeja Chandran - The 5U approach in creating competitive advantage

Leadership Category

Lata Koundal - Lata Koundal’s Submission

Culture Category

Georgia Mihalcea - Life is too short to be little

Kicker Prize

Bright Chidzumeni - SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE A BUSINESS STRATEGY HUH?

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the innovators who entered the challenge. While only 4 innovators are receiving the prizes above, there were so many other insightful solutions, we are confident that many of the innovators in this challenge will do great things in the future. Thank you all for helping make this challenge a success.

We would also like to thank all our supporters, partners, commenters and anyone else who in any way contributed to our challenge community. Without you, we would not have had the challenge that we did.

Huge thanks to everyone who participated! The Patterns for Success Challenge closed for submissions last night at midnight. Keep an eye out for updates in the meantime, as the judging process will now begin. We expect to announce winners by November 8th -- we'll keep you posted to any changes or delays to that day. In the meantime, pat yourselves on the back! You've made a huge contribution to the HeroX community and for that we can't thank you enough.

Just a friendly reminder that this is your LAST DAY to submit to the Patterns for Success Challenge! Please contact the HeroX team directly through the challenge page if you have any questions or concerns. Good luck to all!